Saturday, March 11, 2017

The problem is our lack of faith

An article in The New Statesman by Jonn Elledge explains very well why the federalists will be blamed for the collapse of the pro-independence campaign in Catalonia, even if the article is about the UK: things do not turn out as expected because of the lack of faith of the skeptics. This is how this Tinkerbell theory works: "It was in run up to the Scottish referendum that I first spotted Tinkerbell in the wild. Reports suggesting that RBS would consider relocating from Edinburgh, should independence lead to a significant rise in business costs – a statement of the bloody obvious, I’d have thought – were dismissed by then-First Minister Alex Salmond as merely “talking down Scotland”. Over the next few months, the same phrase was deployed by the SNP and its outriders whenever anyone questioned the Yes campaign’s optimistic estimates of future North Sea oil revenues. The implications of all this were pretty clear: any practical problems apparently arising from independence were mere phantasms. The real threat to Scotland was the erosion of animal spirits caused by the faithlessness of unpatriotic unionists, who’d happily slaughter every fairy in the land before they risked an independent Scotland. All this seemed pretty obnoxious to me, but at the time of the referendum it also all seemed to be a reassuringly long way away. Little did I realise that Salmond and co were just ahead of their time, because today, Tinkerbell-ism is bloody inescapable. On Monday, Sir John Major made a wonkish speech laying out his concerns about Brexit. He talked about the threat to the Northern Ireland peace process, the way it would isolate Britain diplomatically, the difficulty of negotiating highly complicated trade deals on the timetable imposed by Article 50. He wanted, he said, to “warn against an over-optimism that – if unachieved – will sow further distrust between politics and the public, at a time when trust needs to be re-built”. And how did Britain’s foreign secretary respond? “I think it’s very important that as we set out in this journey we are positive about the outcome for the very good reason the outcome will be fantastic for this country,” Boris said, probably imagining himself to be a bit like Cicero."